The international healthcare business of M:Communications is the latest of the agency's divisions to spin off into a separate firm.

Consilium Strategic Communications launched today after the M: healthcare team bought the business out of parent company King Worldwide.

The firm will be led by managing partner Mary-Jane Elliott in London together with fellow co-founder Amber Bielecka.

Fellow former M: staffer Emma Thompson, currently an account director at AKA Asia, will also join the team in August to spearhead the agency’s Asian operations from Singapore.

Elliot said the agency, wholly owned by its employees, represented ‘Europe’s only healthcare-focused financial PR and IR company’.

She added: ‘The spin-out and launch of Consilium Strategic Communications allows us to intensify our focus on our clients with our dedicated sector approach and to provide unmatched capabilities across all levels of the healthcare sector on a truly international scale.’

The initial seven-strong team established M:’s healthcare practice four years ago.

The agency will provide a full spectrum of specialist comms services, including financial comms, cross-border transactional support, reputation management, crisis management and guidance on corporate and social responsibility strategies.

Elliot said that the healthcare business had remained unaffected by the wider break-up of M:, which was triggered by the resignation of a group of senior partners, including founders Nick Miles and Hugh Morrison, in March.

She added that the practice had won a number of new clients in recent months and M:’s healthcare client list had moved across to the new agency.

Launch clients include Merck, Zealand Pharma and Oxford BioMedica.

Consilium is the third business to spin out of M: in the past month, following the launch of energy and natural resources-focused Vigo Communications and M:’s former Russian business EM.

Mark Wilson, CEO of King Worldwide, said: ‘We wish the Consilium team good luck in their new venture and every success for the future.’